PvP Watch
- By
PvP awareness for WoW Retail and Forever. Track hostile players, Lost Contact, KoS targets, estimated enemy cooldowns, and shared group intel. Get configurable alerts for world PvP and battlegrounds, with client-specific modules and readable Blizzard data.
PvP Watch
Keep watch. Recognize threats. Know what the data actually says.
World of Warcraft Retail & Forever
Hostile-player awareness, Lost Contact, KoS and shared PvP information.
PvP Watch supports World of Warcraft Retail and Forever. It brings hostile-player contacts, recent encounters, player notes and observed cooldowns into configurable PvP displays. It helps you notice opponents as soon as permitted, readable client data becomes available, whether you are watching the open world or fighting in a battleground.
The addon automatically selects the modules and spell data appropriate for your client. Forever support is included as beta support, with shared scanner and battleground features and separate client-specific functionality. Choose a compatible file for your client when installing; older Retail-only files do not include Forever support.
Detection is not guaranteed before an attack. PvP Watch cannot reveal hidden players, increase Blizzard's detection range or turn incomplete information into confirmed enemy positions.
Main Features
- Main Watch: configurable lists with names, classes, sources, recent activity, Lost timers, KoS status and notes where data is available.
- Early warnings: event-driven contact tracking, configurable encounter re-arming and throttled alerts.
- Lost Contact: source rechecks, Seen/Lost transitions, reacquisition and separate alert filters.
- KoS and Guild KoS: mark relevant opponents and guilds, preserve notes and control repeat warnings.
- Enemy and Target Cooldowns: estimated timers based on readable, supported spell observations.
- Team Cooldowns: group-member cooldown information and optional compatible-addon sharing.
- Battleground information: readable scoreboard metadata, kept separate from live contact evidence.
- Customizable presentation: saved window positions, scale, columns, scrolling, icons, sounds and target markers.
Retail and Forever: The Right Modules for Your Client
The shared package selects the appropriate client implementation and spell data. There is no manual client-profile switch.
- Both clients: shared contact tracking, battleground metadata, Main Watch, Lost Contact, KoS, notes, supported cooldown displays, team tracking and sharing.
- Retail: outdoor automatic activity follows War Mode. Arena tracking remains available. Native PvP bounty map reports are an individually enabled experimental option.
- Forever: outdoor automatic activity uses readable player PvP or free-for-all flags. Retail Arena and native Bounty modules are not loaded; saved settings cannot reactivate them.
Forever has its own reviewed, incomplete cooldown data and conservative class assumptions. Unverified spells, items and abilities are not filled in using Retail guesses. KoS, ordinary nameplate markers and the target crosshair are not the Retail-only Bounty feature.
Settings remain local to each client's installation. Do not merge SavedVariables between Retail and Forever.
Main Watch and Contact Evidence
Choose Watch, Active, Recent, Lost, KoS or All. Active is limited to local direct contact; All provides historical records. Configurable expiry removes inactive rows from operational views without treating that as deletion of player history.
Contact counts and source information distinguish:
- Local contact: a permitted, readable direct unit token or nameplate.
- Indirect information: a group target or an enabled indirect probe, not confirmation of local visibility.
- Shared reports: observations sent by another PvP Watch user, not independently verified by your client.
- Native map reports: Retail Blizzard bounty markers, which may be distant and are not local sightings.
- Historical information: last-known records, not proof that an opponent is still present.
Sighting coordinates describe the observer's position, not an invented enemy location. Native marker coordinates are identified separately. Shared map context does not prove that two outdoor players are in the same phase or shard.
Early Warning and Lost Contact
Core sources include exposed nameplates, target, focus, mouseover and supported soft-target tokens. Group targets provide indirect information; Retail also uses arena tokens. The addon groups repeated work and suppresses duplicate notifications while preserving fresh encounters.
After losing the last suitable local source, PvP Watch rechecks contact before warning. Genuine reacquisition clears the previous Lost timer; a later loss starts a new cycle. The Lost column is recorded independently of whether your alert filters allow a sound or popup.
Choose stealth-capable-class or all-class warnings, with optional stricter signal and fresh-range rules. A disappearance alone does not prove stealth: range, visibility and context changes can also explain it. Forever class-only inference currently uses reviewed Rogue/Druid capability; missing classes mean insufficient evidence, not proof that those classes lack stealth abilities.
KoS, Notes and Alerts
Mark individual players or guilds, keep personal notes and highlight relevant opponents. KoS, Guild-KoS and noted records are protected from ordinary automatic history cleanup.
Configure chat messages, raid-warning-style popups and sounds. Repeat encounters can re-arm after a contact gap; KoS has its own once-per-session and repeat-cooldown controls. Shared, indirect and map-report alerts remain distinguishable from local contact.
Enemy, Target and Team Cooldowns
Enemy Cooldowns is an observed-cooldown timer table. Target Cooldowns combines target-specific icons and remaining-time information in one display. Team Cooldowns focuses on group members; your own cooldowns can be shared without appearing in your own team list.
Readable supported unit spellcasts can start estimates. Categories and individual spells can be filtered, and expired timers are cleaned up. The available spell catalog depends on the client.
Timers are estimates, not verified readiness. Talent changes, specialization, charges and resets are not completely modeled. An unseen or unlisted ability does not produce a confirmed cooldown. Old aura-based or unrestricted combat-log inference is not used to fill the gaps.
Sharing and Battlegrounds
Optional sharing exchanges sightings and supported cooldown observations through allowed, configured addon channels. Context, age and duplicate checks limit stale information. Strictly older timestamped sighting and Lost reports from the same observer cannot overwrite newer contact state.
Overlapping group/world-entry handshakes are combined, and expired sharing and scanner cache entries are cleaned through existing maintenance. These changes reduce unnecessary work; they are not a measured in-game performance guarantee or a fixed memory cap.
Battleground score data can enrich player records when readable. A scoreboard row is metadata only, not a live sighting. Remote reports remain remote; sender clocks, same-second ordering and older untimestamped messages have limits.
Display and Experimental Options
Adjust window positions, sizes, scale, opacity, rows, columns and auto-hide behavior. The minimap button, target crosshair and nameplate markers provide optional access and visual emphasis. Target indicators require a suitable anchor; stored names or GUIDs do not allow unrestricted automatic targeting.
Tracking & Sources → Experimental Scanning contains individually selected probes for readable range/position information, pet-owner hints, target chains, tooltip/inspect metadata and cast-start contact hints. Retail-specific arena CC and native bounty options remain client-gated.
Unlocking the experimental controls does not enable every probe. Missing or restricted results remain unknown. A cast-start hint does not itself confirm successful spell use or start a cooldown.
Getting Started
- Choose a package intended for your client. Before updating, close WoW and back up the existing addon and that client's SavedVariables.
- Install the complete PvPWatch folder into that client's Interface/AddOns directory. PvPWatch.toc must sit directly inside that folder.
- Open /dpvp options to review activity, windows and alerts. Use /dpvp guide for the in-game introduction.
- Start with the normal sources. Enable experimental probes individually only when you want to evaluate them.
- For group sharing, use compatible builds and matching allowed settings on participating clients.
Do not merge old and new addon folders or copy databases between clients. No separate development runtime or external application is needed to run the addon. The interface and built-in messages are English; names supplied by WoW may follow your game language.
Useful Commands
- /dpvp toggle - Show or hide Main Watch.
- /dpvp options - Open addon settings.
- /dpvp guide and /dpvp commands - Open help and the command reference.
- /dpvp view watch|active|recent|lost|kos|all - Choose a watch mode.
- /dpvp kos NAME and /dpvp guildkos GUILD - Toggle KoS markings.
- /dpvp note NAME TEXT - Save a player note.
- /dpvp enemies, /dpvp targetcds and /dpvp teamcds - Toggle cooldown displays.
- /dpvp status and /dpvp scanstatus - Inspect activity and source status.
- /dpvp release, /dpvp dump and /dpvp errors - Collect useful troubleshooting information.
Current Scope and Honest Limits
The current addon does not provide raw hostile-aura scanning, BigDebuffs-style aura analysis, automatic aura-derived diminishing returns, aura-based cooldown inference or an unrestricted combat-log scanner. The old Rules/Threat scoring system and separate Shared view are not current features.
It does not reveal stealthed players, guarantee warnings before every attack, fabricate enemy coordinates or bypass protected UI and restricted-data rules. Readable data can vary by client, combat state and Blizzard changes.
Beta testing: Retail and Forever support are implemented in the shared package. Offline syntax, logic and archive checks have passed; the current package still needs in-game validation in both clients. Actual loading, combat restrictions, event delivery, sharing, layout and performance remain part of that testing. Beta support is not a guarantee of complete gameplay stability.
Debug and Feedback
For a useful report, include the addon build, actual client version/build, Retail or Forever, activity context, enabled sources, reproduction steps and the first relevant Lua error. Mention whether the issue occurred in combat and whether nameplates were visible. For layout problems, include resolution and UI scale.
Use the built-in diagnostics rather than leaving verbose debugging enabled unnecessarily. Review reports and screenshots for private player names or notes before posting. Missing API data is not automatically an addon bug.
Support ArcAnvil
PvP Watch is free to use. Supporting development, testing and future improvements is entirely optional.
Created by ArcAnvil.
PvP Watch Team
